I was born in 1973, got my first computer in 1994, defragging was part of regular maintenance. I can’t remember the last time I defragged anything, even though I have several devices with hard drives, including a Windows laptop. Has storage technology changed so much that defragging isn’t necessary anymore? Is it even possible to defrag a smart phone hard drive?
edit to add: I apologize for posting this same question several times, I was getting an error message every time I hit “post”… but from looking around, it seems I’m not the only one having this problem today.
In: 821
Most forms of storage support fragmentation. It splits up a large file into smaller pieces to fit between other things. Kind of like a whole Encyclopedia Britannica with 36 volumes doesn’t fit in your bookshelf so to save time you just put each volume where it fits. By keeping a record of where you put them you can find them nearly as easily.
For HDDs (hard disk drives) they use a spinning piece of metal like the bookshelf in this metaphor. It takes time for it to spin and computers are incredibly fast so this delay slows everything down. To minimize this you can rearrange the bookshelf or defragment, moving things around to allow your Encyclopedia Britannica to all fit on one shelf, making loading it faster.
Modern computers tend to use SSDs (solid state disks) which are all electrical and this don’t need to spin. That means that fragmentation doesn’t matter.
Additionally wear is important. HDD can survive more write cycles (changing the value stored) than the lifetime of the device. In constrast SSDs could easily wear out during the lifetime. To help with this the SSD spreads out where it writes things, defragmentation would increase writes and also force those writes to be on particular locations both of which reduce the lifetime of the drive.
I was born in 1973, got my first computer in 1994, defragging was part of regular maintenance. I can’t remember the last time I defragged anything, even though I have several devices with hard drives, including a Windows laptop. Has storage technology changed so much that defragging isn’t necessary anymore? Is it even possible to defrag a smart phone hard drive?
edit to add: I apologize for posting this same question several times, I was getting an error message every time I hit “post”… but from looking around, it seems I’m not the only one having this problem today.
In: 821
Most forms of storage support fragmentation. It splits up a large file into smaller pieces to fit between other things. Kind of like a whole Encyclopedia Britannica with 36 volumes doesn’t fit in your bookshelf so to save time you just put each volume where it fits. By keeping a record of where you put them you can find them nearly as easily.
For HDDs (hard disk drives) they use a spinning piece of metal like the bookshelf in this metaphor. It takes time for it to spin and computers are incredibly fast so this delay slows everything down. To minimize this you can rearrange the bookshelf or defragment, moving things around to allow your Encyclopedia Britannica to all fit on one shelf, making loading it faster.
Modern computers tend to use SSDs (solid state disks) which are all electrical and this don’t need to spin. That means that fragmentation doesn’t matter.
Additionally wear is important. HDD can survive more write cycles (changing the value stored) than the lifetime of the device. In constrast SSDs could easily wear out during the lifetime. To help with this the SSD spreads out where it writes things, defragmentation would increase writes and also force those writes to be on particular locations both of which reduce the lifetime of the drive.
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